Nevermore
by Khell
Summary: Excuse the dramatic title - it's actually just a little tag for "Playing for Keeps". Francine's mad at Lee and he doesn't know why. Maybe you can figure it out? ;)


**Nevermore**

Tag for "Playing for Keeps"

* * *

By the time Lee had finished his phone conversation with Amanda, Francine had disappeared in the crowd. It took him a while to find her. She was standing with two guys and a woman he didn't know, talking and laughing. He approached the small group.

"Francine."

She turned. Something in her demeanor changed, very subtly. He couldn't put his finger on what exactly but it made him feel like an intruder.

"I'm going back to D.C.", he said and put his hands in his pockets.

"So?" she asked and arched her eyebrows.

"Well, don't you want to come, too? You don't have a car."

They had come here in his car – Francine's was still at the Agency.

"Oh, that's alright. I'm sure I'll find someone to take me back to town. I'll see you on Monday – have a nice weekend!"

She smiled at him – one of those huge, flashy smiles that never were entirely sincere – and turned away again, back to the other three. He very clearly was dismissed. Maybe he should be grateful she didn't shoo him away with a queenly wave of her hand. All he could do, thus, was leave. He hesitated for a moment. It didn't sit well with him to leave Francine all alone among strangers.

 _Oh, come on – it's Francine. She'll be acquainted with half the people here before the hour's up and know all about them that there is to know._

Francine knew how to take care of herself.

"See you on Monday", he murmured and turned away.

He couldn't wait to get home to Amanda and tell her all about how she had helped solve this case.

* * *

As it turned out he did not see Francine on Monday because Amanda passed on her cold to him and on Monday, it hit him full force. "Kid germs" she said when he called her. They were the worst kind, obviously. She recommended he take the day off and stay in bed to speed up his recovery. He only agreed to it when she promised to drop by and check on him later.

When he returned to the Agency on Tuesday, Francine wasn't there. He wasn't concerned at first. She might be in a meeting or running errands for Billy. It wasn't until around noon that he started to worry a bit. Meetings never went on for that long and even if Billy had sent her somewhere she should have been back by now. Then, he overheard Fielder and Duffy talking by the coffee station.

"She wasn't here yesterday, either", Duffy said.

Fielder shrugged.  
"Probably been partying the whole weekend long or so and called in sick yesterday."

"That explains why she wasn't at work yesterday – but what about today?"  
Duffy noticed Lee and turned to him.  
"You were with her on that assignment, weren't you?" he asked. "Do you know what's the matter with her?"

Lee could only shake his head.  
"I last saw her on Friday and she was fine when I left."

He excused himself. Billy. Billy would know where Francine was. She would have told him. But Billy wasn't in his office and when Lee asked he learned Billy was out for meetings all day long. No, Francine wasn't with him. So Lee called her apartment and left a message on her answering machine. He called Dispatch, got a number she had left and tried to reach her there. No one answered and no answering machine either, this time. He checked whether she had called in sick – she hadn't. By late afternoon he was ready to drive back to Shenandoah Tennis Ranch and ask among the personnel if anyone had seen her leave on Friday and with whom she had left but Billy finally did show up to drop a stack of files on him in passing, telling him he wanted them done "yesterday".

"Do you know where Francine is?" Lee asked him.

"Didn't she tell you?" was all he got in reply before Billy hurried on to his next meeting.

* * *

Lee took the files to the Q-Bureau and called Amanda from there to tell her about his concerns.

"Francine's a trained professional", Amanda told him. "At least that's what she keeps telling everyone so one would think she knows how to take care of herself."

"Yes, but what if something happened to her?" he argued. "I mean – not necessarily the Russians grabbing her or something like that. What if she did find someone to take her back to D.C. and they were in a car accident?"

Amanda sure couldn't deny that was a very real possibility. It happened all the time, right?

"But wouldn't you have heard of that by now?" she asked.

True enough. Billy probably would have been notified of it and would have told him.

"I'm sure she'll be back soon", Amanda said and he could hear her smile.

"Well, if she isn't back by tomorrow morning I'll start looking for her."

Amanda was right. If anything had happened to Francine, Billy would have heard of it and told him by now. And if she really had gone missing he already would have several Agency teams searching for her. At least that was what Lee's common sense told him. He couldn't entirely shake the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, though.

* * *

Lee didn't sleep well that night – the cold, he told himself, who could sleep properly when their nose was all blocked up? – and on Wednesday morning he was ready to talk to Billy again and demand something be done to find Francine. At least until he arrived at the Agency and found Francine sitting at her desk.

His first reaction was relief – quickly followed by anger. At her for having him worried and at himself for worrying over nothing. He stormed over to her desk.

"Where were you?" he demanded.

Francine looked up to him, the very image of calm.  
"Good morning to you, too."  
She straightened several papers, put them in a file folder and closed it.  
"And as for your question – none of your business."

Lee opened his mouth to protest but before he could say anything the door to Billy's office opened and Billy stepped out.

"Desmond! Stetson!" he called. "Get in here."

Francine immediately got up, brushed past Lee and entered Billy's office. All he could do was follow her and sit down next to her before Billy's desk. Billy sat down, too, folded his hands on his desk and looked at them with an almost fatherly smile.

"So things at Shenandoah Tennis Ranch went fine", he said, "which is good because since you're such a good team –"

"Were", Francine cut him off.

Billy frowned.  
"Come again?"

"We _were_ a good team, Billy. Past tense. We're not anymore."  
Francine gave Lee a sideways glance.  
"If you want a good team, pair him off with Amanda."

Lee frowned at her.  
"What is this, payback because I called Amanda a few times?" he asked slightly annoyed.

He should have known she would react like this. She didn't like Amanda – of course she would take issue with him consulting with her over the phone.

"Well, let me tell you that Amanda's a damn fine agent and –"

"That's not the point", Francine interrupted him sharply. "The point is: When you're working with me, I expect you to be working with _me_ , not someone else."

Lee's frown deepened.  
"May I remind you that it was Amanda who figured out what was going on and cracked the case?"

He had been suspecting for quite a while that Francine was jealous of Amanda. The assignments she got. The fact that she was working together with him almost exclusively these days. Surely that couldn't sit well with Francine who very obviously considered herself a better agent than Amanda. Well, maybe she was in some areas, mostly those that required experience in the field. But in others Amanda was so much better than her.

Francine rolled her eyes.  
"Oh please. Everyone who knows half a thing about tennis tournaments would have come to that conclusion sooner or later. I could have told you the same thing – she just was lucky because she figured it out first. That's still not the point."

"Then what?" Lee demanded. "Please, enlighten us."

He gestured at himself and Billy. Billy, he noticed, was leaning back in his chair and watching the scene unfold before him rather than interfering.

"The point is", Francine said and she seemed oddly calm, "that I don't want to work with a partner who's distracted half the time, either because he's moping about not being able to work with his favourite partner or because he's on the phone with them."

"I wasn't –"  
Lee turned to Billy.  
"I wasn't moping!"

"Well, you certainly were sending strong enough 'I'd rather be working this with Amanda' vibes that I could feel them across the tennis court."

Francine still sounded calm. Lee started suspecting, though, that she wasn't really feeling it. He also wasn't so sure anymore whether this was really just jealousy because that would have been more likely to throw her into either an icy cold or a fiery rant about how housewives weren't apt to be agents, how they lacked the necessary skills and training and so on – the same stuff he had heard her say over and over again those past few years since it had first become clear Amanda was here to stay.

"How can I rely on you – how can I trust you to have my back when you're not completely there? When part of you is in Arlington all the time? And don't tell me you weren't wishing it was Amanda working with you and not me."

Lee remained silent. He couldn't deny it – he had been thinking of Amanda quite a bit all through that assignment, comparing her to Francine, how she would have done things differently, handled them better, wondering what she might have seen that he himself was overlooking.

"Things worked out fine at the ranch", Francine went on, "but that doesn't change the fact that being distracted is dangerous in our job. It can get you killed – or your partner."

"So you're saying that Lee shouldn't get in the field anymore?"  
Billy finally spoke.

Before Lee could protest Francine shook her head.

"No. I'm saying if you want me to go in the field – partner me with anyone but Lee. If you want Lee to go in the field – give him Amanda. They're your best team after all."

Lee scarcely believed his ears. Had Francine really just called him and Amanda the Agency's best team?

Billy still remained silent for another few moments where he just kept looking at them, first at Francine, then Lee, then back at Francine.

"Right", he said. "You're not a good team anymore so that means I'll have to find someone else for that next assignment I was going to send you on." He waited for a beat and went on: "Running security for a foreign dignitary who's visiting D.C. Lots of sightseeing, piece of cake really since he's got his own security detail with him. You'd just have to be there to show our presence."

He turned his gaze on Francine. So did Lee, fully expecting her to backtrack and say that of course she could work together with him again for just this once.

"Send Duffy and Fielder", she told Billy without even as much as blinking. "Fielder's a jerk but he'll be on his best behavior for this one. And Duffy's been working hard lately. He'll be glad to get a break."

Lee barely managed to keep his jaw from dropping. Francine, passing on a plum job like this just so that she didn't have to work with him?

 _She really means it …_

Billy raised his eyebrows in disbelief.  
"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes. Is that all? I have a lot of work backlogged from Monday and yesterday and I'd like to get it finished."

Francine waited for a moment and when Billy didn't say anything she got up and swept out of the room. Billy and Lee both looked after her. When the door had closed behind her Billy turned to Lee.

"I don't know _what_ you did, Scarecrow, but this time you really did it."

All Lee could do was shrug. He didn't know either. The thing he did know, though, was that he better talk to Francine and try to fix this before it spun out of control.

* * *

Francine stood with one of the trainee agents on the other side of the bullpen, about to hand over some files.

"- and those need to go back to the archive", Lee heard her say as he approached them.  
She looked up and spotted him.  
"Never mind", she said and pulled the files back. "I'll take them myself."  
She turned and headed for the door.

"Francine!"  
Lee hurried after her and caught up with her in the corridor.  
"Francine, wait!"

He touched her arm to stop her. She did stop and turn to him but she also stepped away from him.

"What?" she asked. "I'm busy."

"Listen …"  
Lee rubbed the back of his neck.  
"I don't know what I did but I'm really sorry."

Francine looked at him for a moment, then she nodded.  
"Duly noted. Will you let me get back to work now?"

Without waiting for a reply she turned away and started walking again. Her tone had been even more businesslike than before, in Billy's office. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

Again, he found himself hurrying after her.

"If you'd maybe be kind enough to tell me what I did wrong then I could apologize properly."  
He was starting to lose his temper.

 _Really, what's the matter with her?_

He went over everything that had happened at the ranch. Somehow, her remark about the good old days stuck out to him.

 _Well, it wasn't like the good old days. Not at all._

But she couldn't really be that upset about him calling Amanda and talking to her, could she? No, the Francine Desmond he knew would just toss a snarky remark at him about how she wasn't surprised to find Scarecrow incapable of thinking, having to leave his brain behind in Arlington – or something like that.

"If it's about Amanda –"

"No, it's not about Amanda", Francine cut him off, still in that businesslike tone. "And it's not you, either. It's me. I made a mistake, that's all. Don't worry, it won't happen again."

They had reached the elevator. The doors slid open, Francine entered. Lee blocked the door from closing with his hand.

"What mistake?"

"None of your business."  
Francine pushed the button for the archive. Her body language clearly told him that she wanted him out of her presence. He decided to make one last attempt.

"Hey, how about we head out to Ned's for drinks after work?" he asked and added with a smile: "You know, just you and me. Like the good old days."

He didn't know how to interpret the look she gave him. For a moment he thought it had worked, that she was going to accept. Then she shook her head.  
"No. As I said I'm busy catching up with the stuff that got backlogged on Monday and yesterday. And besides – the good old days are over, Scarecrow."

She pushed the elevator button again and this time, he stepped back and let the doors close.

* * *

Francine sighed. He didn't even know what he had done wrong – or rather, what he had _not_ done. Well, she certainly wouldn't tell him. He could figure it out all by himself. Or maybe Amanda could figure it out for him since she was so good at noticing things everybody else was completely missing.

 _Well, what did you expect? It's like you told him – the good old days are over._


End file.
